that one.’ We worked for a few minutes, going through the gifts and lining everything up on the kitchen hatch and along the coffee table. We stared around us. Eventually, I said, ‘Hang on, why would we want … seven vases?’
We looked through everything around us, at the plaid garden kneeler and the brass rabbit ornament.
‘This isn’t ours,’ we said at the same time. The giddiness and bustle of the upcoming wedding had meant we’d opened and unpacked every box without really noticing what was in there; it was only the coffee maker which looked familiar from our own list.
‘Mmm. Can we keep the espresso machine, though? Didn’t we want one of those?’ Jack looked at me pleadingly.
‘Hell yes. We’ll claim it as compensation for our missing gifts.’
While Jack made us a barrel of coffee each, I started on the sandwiches: bacon, avocado and feta, slathered with hot pepper chutney. My sore head and tiredness got the better of my manners, and I’d almost finished mine by the time Jack brought the coffees to the sofa.
‘That coffee machine was literally harder to set up than an actual spaceship.’
‘Literally.’
‘Having flown many, I’m confident in that comparison.’ We peered into our mugs, staring at the black speckles scattered through the frothed milk. ‘I might not have entirely mastered it quite yet.’
‘Tea?’
‘Tea.’
I swallowed my last bite of sandwich, headed into the kitchen and boiled the kettle. Hungover-peckish, I opened the fridge.
‘Oh my god!’
Jack leant in through the hatch. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘Look!’
Inside the fridge was the whole top half of our wedding cake, in all its creamy, buttery, sugary glory – one of my sisters must have dropped it off this morning, before we’d got home. Jack gulped down the sandwich he was holding, pulled out the cake, and said, ‘Right, you keep doing the teas, and I’ll get the forks. Do we need plates?’
I shook my head at him with mock horror. ‘Plates? Please, who are we, the Queen?’ Within five minutes we were back on the sofa, giant mugs of tea in our hands, forking wodges of cake from the platter. As we lazily watched The Antiques Roadshow, I cuddled up under Jack’s arm.
This was better. This was the married life Jack had promised me.
He started laughing.
‘What?’
His eyes creased up with how funny this genius thought was, and soon he was barely able to get the words out.
‘I bet you’re thinking … how if this is married life … it really suits you!’
‘That’s it? That’s your searing insight of the day? How much I like lying on the sofa, eating cake and watching TV with you? Well done for having registered the basic facts of my life preferences.’
‘Is this how you always saw yourself when you were grown up?’
‘Unlike every other normal child, I didn’t spend my youth fantasising about the chosen decor and potential TV habits of my adult self. I was too busy getting skinned knees and crushing on the local lifeguard.’
‘I hope you’ll give me his name so I can send him a note letting him know he lost his chance.’
‘Romance, thy name is Jack. I think he was gay, anyway.’
‘Wow, he really did miss his chance.’
‘Listen, much as all this talk of the homosexual lifeguards of my childhood is turning me on, shouldn’t we be consummating our marriage or something?’
‘Is that an invitation?’
I responded by stripping off as quickly as possible, despite my sore, sugar-rushing head.
‘Do you remember when we used to worry about sophisticated chat-up lines?’
‘Jack, I said “I do”. What more do you need?’ I started trying to pull his trainers off.
‘You’re such a femme fatale.’
‘I’ll give you femme fatale.’
‘Ooh, will you?’ Jack’s face lit up.
‘If you mean will I put on red lipstick, then yes, I’m willing to do that. If you mean literally anything else, then no, unless you do it too.’
‘I knew married life was going to change you.’
I stopped trying to pull his other trainer off.
‘Yeah, you’ve got me. Now, are you going to get this kit off or am I going to have to go and visit my local pool for any heterosexual leftovers from my teenage years?’
Jack pulled his top off. ‘You had me at heterosexual leftovers.’
We couldn’t afford a honeymoon. Dad had said, Dad-like, that he’d never even been out of the country until he was in his thirties, which made Mum narrow her eyes at him until he’d offered us another cup of tea and a biscuit. Friends and family sent hampers and vouchers, and the three days after the wedding were spent mostly wrapped around each other in our flat, occasionally moving upright to get more smoked salmon or chocolate eclairs or boar pâté down us, or to tighten the curtains against the cold January winds. But just as I started worrying I might be coming down with either gout or scurvy, the honeymoon was over, and we were due back at work the next day.
It was a cold Monday morning as Jack handed over my packed lunch, kissing me goodbye outside our front door. ‘Back to school. Have a good day, wife.’ I was still uncomfortable with that. I’d swallow it down, though, just like that second tier of wedding cake.
‘Have a good day, dearest husband of mine.’
We both made mock-vomiting faces, kissed again, then went in our separate directions: me a bus ride away to Walker High School, the secondary where I’d been teaching Science for the last four years, and Jack to the shoe shop he owns and designs for, all slick white spaces and open brickwork and handmade shoes strewn artfully around.
When I got into the Science office, I immediately set eyes on a tray of bubbling prosecco laid out on a table piled high with cards and gifts, with balloons sellotaped to each corner. No one was about. I walked around to the small kitchenette, where everyone was clustered around something on the other side of the room.
‘Happy New Year. Is it someone’s birthday?’ I asked, making everyone scream in surprise. Our lab assistant, Miks, yelped and knocked the cake they’d all been huddled around off the counter. We all stared at the mush of icing and crumbs on the floor, the candles still somehow burning as they lay at odd angles from the side of the pile.
‘You’re early! You’re never early, darling!’ wailed Benni. ‘These guys just wanted to do something to mark your wedding—’
